In
addition, he was bowlegged as a greyhound, and just now he moved with a
limp as though very footsore. His coarse blue flannel shirt, open at the
throat, exposed a broad hairy chest that rose and fell mightily with the
effort he was making. And therein lay the mystery. The sun was hot--with
the heat of a cloudless August sun at one o'clock of the afternoon. The
country he was traversing was wild, unbroken--uninhabited apparently of
man or of beast. Far to his left, just visible through the dancing heat
rays, indistinct as a mirage, was a curling fringe of green trees. To
his right, behind him, ahead of him was not a tree nor a shrub nor a
rock the height of a man's head; only ungrazed, yellowish-green
sun-dried prairie grass. The silence was complete. Not even a breath of
wind rustled the grass; yet ever and anon the man paused glanced back
the way he had come, listened, his throat throbbing with the effort of
repressed breathing, in obvious expectation of a sound he did not hear;
then, for the time relieved, forged ahead afresh, one hand gripping the
butt of an old Springfield rifle slung over his shoulder, the other,
big, unclean, sunbrowned, swinging like a pendulum at his side.
Ludicrous, unqualifiedly, the figure would have been in civilisation,
humorous as a clown in a circus; but seeing it here, solitary, exotic,
no observer would have laughed. Fear, mortal dogging fear, impersonate,
supreme, was in every look, every action.
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